Printing firms best suited for growth can move and manage information as well as they can print or sell ink on paper. Today, offering solutions trumps selling "stuff," and that's why salespeople present themselves as print consultants instead of product-peddlers. It's also why more companies concentrate on value-added services such as database management, warehousing and fulfillment, statement processing and image archiving.
Distributors, manufacturers and suppliers interviewed for this story expect 2005 to be positive for the independent channel, which controls approximately 56 percent of all print business, according to DMIA's Formtrac reports. And 90 percent of respondents to a recent TrendWatch Graphic Arts survey believe sales this year will be as good or better than in 2004.
Companies willing to seek new growth are finding that opportunities abound. This year, speed matters, and the light is green.
Today's document industry is more about brisk pace than better products.
BY DARIN PAINTER
Today's end users take quality for granted, so speed often determines which company gets and keeps business. More than ever, fast-growing firms are exactly that--fast.
Digital printing technology and e-commerce systems are critical, not just cool. End users want internet ordering and tracking, custom solutions and super-fast turnaround. When would you like your job completed, Mr. Customer? How about now? Eight percent of all print orders are delivered within 24 hours, according to "Printing in the Age of the Web and Beyond," a study by the Electronic Document Systems Foundation, Torrance, Calif. By 2020, 30 percent of all print jobs will be delivered within a day, the study says.
A Quick, Digital Marketplace
"Everything today is instant--instant coffee, instant messaging, instant printing," says Margaret E. Tassin, owner of Forms Doc LLC, a Houston firm that provides forms, analysis, training and technical writing. "Speed is so important. But when people feel the need for speed, they don't conceptualize that even with fast equipment, you can't get most products back to them in two hours. Rapid technology in people's lives makes them more demanding for fast everything."
Prior to launching Forms Doc in 2003, Tassin was manager of forms, records and information management at Pennzoil, where she created an e-forms initiative for the oil company and oversaw daily operations of its forms department and in-house print shop. Pennzoil began using a Xerox DocuTech in 1992. "We learned early on that you have to have a good relationship with IT because they're the people who ensure your network is efficient, your servers are running and jobs are correct before they arrive at the printer," Tassin says. She recalls discussing electronic data interchange and e-forms during a business meeting in 1998. "I'll never forget it," she says. "A distributor raised his hand and asked, 'You mean these technologies are going to affect my business?' Today, every distributor could talk about a hit they've taken due to electronic processing and the trend for companies to move away from paper forms."
Demand for continuous stock forms produced by manufacturers began to decline in 1996, according to DMIA's Formtrac reports. As sales of conventional forms keep dwindling, more distributors offer growth products such as digital printing, direct mail, commercial printing, labels, presentation folders, packaging, plastic products and promotional items. In fact, the industry covers such a broad range of products, it's difficult for many firms to describe what business they're in.
In the last decade, the industry has experienced the emergence of the computer-to-plate process, digital printing and automated workflows. Digitization is beginning sooner in the printing process, ending later, and encompassing more of the total communications and information flow between businesses. According to TrendWatch Graphic Arts, 13 percent of all print and prepress firms have worked on jobs that incorporate variable-image, variable-text information.
"Color is a bigger part of what we do now," says James R. Dohm, president of Digitex, a distributorship in Wrightsville, Pa. "In my case, it helps that we have a range of things to sell in the industry." In 2004, Digitex lost an $80,000-a-year bank customer due to an acquisition and is looking for new clients to replace the lost account. Dohm recently hired an in-house designer who creates 4-color post cards and trifold direct mail pieces for the distributorship's clients, including several automotive dealerships that use the pieces to promote discounts and other specials. For one dealership that opened new BMW and Cadillac showrooms, Digitex designed a post card that shows the dealership through a rear-view mirror on the front of the card. Text says, "Don't Look at the Rear View." The back shows a regular photo of the dealership and says, "Come See the Clear View."
"From the time a proof is approved on a color job, you better have products delivered quickly," Dohm says, which usually entails working with mail houses, other third-party firms and manufacturers. Digitex often turns around projects in a day, he says. The company recently produced 3,500 24-page, 4-color alumni newsletters for the University of Maryland. The quarterly newsletters required numerous proof changes, and Dohm drove the newsletters 96 miles south to the campus to meet the client's deadline.
"Most distributors who are growing are doing so because their customers are growing.
We have to continue to find ways to help
them do that."
George W. Crump, Chairman and CEO
FRI Resources, St. Louis
"The biggest advantage
for distributors and printers is to
have resources who know what
they don't, because none of us
can be experts on everything.
We need each other
in the supply chain."
Georgianne Plumberg
Product Manager for Forms Papers
Boise Paper Solutions, Vancouver, Wash.
Improvements in color quality, speed, cost per page, and pre- and post-processing systems, and connectivity are increasing user acceptance and a wider range of digital applications. Through printing networks, the distribute-and-print model emerges as an alternative to print-and-distribute, notes Frank J. Romano, professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in DMIA's white paper, "Emerging Trends & Opportunities in Print." Internet-based business enables lean, flexible printing and publishing with just-in-time, on-demand delivery. "In the future, print will not be the choice of the sender; it will be the choice of the receiver," Romano writes.
Fast Technologies of Tomorrow
In 1985, the Wall Street Journal noted there would be "a paperless office when there is a paperless bathroom." By 2010, the number of documents on paper will soar to approximately 20 trillion, according to a report from the Electronic Document Systems Foundation (EDSF). But by then, the majority of all documents will be electronic. (See "Moving to an E-World" on page 30.)
Consumers' need for speed has given birth to new technologies. One is radio frequency identification (RFID), which enables communication with tags and labels via radio waves. These "smart labels" have the potential to revolutionize product labeling, shipping, inventory management, medical records and other applications. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is implementing a plan to force its suppliers to tag their warehouse pallets and containers with RFID tags.
The most common RFID systems use an inlay consisting of a silicon chip bonded to a thin, flexible antenna that's integrated with a label, tag, card or ticket. This chip is a microprocessor capable of storing data and communicating to a reader, and doesn't require a direct line of sight between the chip and reader. Information may be rewritten to the chip, which can verify authenticity of the inquiry. Today, many manufacturing firms use RFID systems, but the technology is trickling to personal-use applications such as ExxonMobil's SpeedPass and toll-road collection tags. RFID also is used widely for access-control applications such as amusement park wristbands. (See "4 Acronyms to Embrace ASAP" on page 28.)
When discussing technologies that will help their firms in 2005, many printing pros talk about the importance of e-commerce. The splash of the late 1990s has become sophisticated and practical: E-commerce is helping many firms empower clients, lower transaction costs and enable seamless internet ordering. Most print-related dot-coms born a few years ago are dot-gone, and others were acquired--Kinko's purchased ImageX.com, and PrintCafe bought Impresse Group and printChannel.
Independent manufacturers and software suppliers regularly enhance their e-commerce systems with new features. "The importance of technology can't be understated, and for us it's twofold--drive volume to our facilities, and reduce transaction costs for us and distributors," says Casey Campbell, president and CEO of Printegra, a manufacturer based in Peachtree City, Ga., and a DMIA Board member. The company, which processes more than 8,000 custom orders weekly, integrates internet order data into its order-management system, eliminating the need to re-key information. Printegra also enables distributors to design, print and order checks and forms through its web site, www.printegra.com, and offers a proprietary online marketing system called ePrintline for distributors specializing in vertical markets. The manufacturer has technology partnerships with Four51, Minneapolis, and TopForm® Software Inc., Norcross, Ga.
"Most distributors who are growing are doing so because their customers are growing," says George W. Crump, chairman and CEO of St. Louis distributorship FRI Resources, and a DMIA Board member. "We have to continue to find ways to help them do that."
FRI Resources runs a web-based store for more than 126,000 referees licensed by the United States Soccer Association. The referees must be re-certified annually. The distributorship mails reminders, certification papers and badges to the referees, who then click a link on the association's web site that takes them to FRI Resources' store. Using credit cards, they can order additional badges, training tapes, soccer rules in English and Spanish, and other products. Once they're re-certified, they can enter their unique numbers and passwords to order additional products that support their referee duties. FRI Resources relies on The Manager™ e-commerce module from supplier Kramer-Smilko Inc., Bel Air, Md.
Some industry pros say emerging technologies such as electronic signatures, data security, portal technology and online payment systems must improve before e-commerce solutions are optimized. In late 2003, DMIA published an XML Implementation Guide to help connect distributors and manufacturers regardless of the application they use to bridge their systems. The guide supports the industry standards of PrintTalk, a community of print management and e-commerce firms that define a best-practice, open communications interface among their products. Several leading distributor software vendors, including DMIA members, are incorporating the code into their own applications. (Visit www.printtalk.org for details.)
